


The Last Order

by Davechicken



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Death, Emperor Hux, M/M, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-06-19
Packaged: 2018-07-16 02:45:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7248949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Davechicken/pseuds/Davechicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beware the man who has too many Masters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last Order

The Emperor likes things _just so_. A man of peculiar tastes, and precise ones, at that. Now he’s in charge, he’s extended his love of control to _every single aspect of his surroundings_ in a way that Kylo had never thought possible.

Or maybe… he’d never considered it, because he’d never been one for any kind of _Order_. It had been the lesser (hah) of two evils (double hah), and now it isn’t even the _Order_ , but the _New Empire_. 

And it is even more regimented than before.

When the ‘day’ started. Each and every meal, and the meal time, too. The ablution facilities. The tiny little squeezy bottles of soap. The clothes in the wardrobe. The socks in the drawer. The pattern in which the viewscreens were cleaned. The renumbering of all the troopers, or the substitution of them when a number was removed, so the series flowed. 

Kylo is going insane. No one needs to micro-manage _this much_. And even worse, so much time is spent in ensuring things were **right** that everything else was… sort of… dull? At least before he’d been terrorised by possibilities, by future pain.

What did he have to look forward to, now? Scheduled violence, scheduled speeches, scheduled solitude. He couldn’t even misbehave for ad-hoc punishment: he’d be sent off to wallow in his own misery until the few ‘free’ periods rolled around and his transgression could be handled until he bowed and scraped again.

It was… _dull_.

Where was the adventure? Just because they had no enemies, now. What was life without one? 

Not worth living, was what. Kylo couldn’t _stand_ this. He’d thought it would be good, or could be good. Maybe he’d not grown up as a young boy expecting to finish his days clad in dainty things and on a leash, but he’d been flexible. He’d been nothing _but_ flexible, whatever life threw at him. He’d even learned how to like pain, and found some twisted, broken ways to get his kicks from cruel words and looks. 

Better to be noticed, hated, despised than… forgotten. ~~Alone.~~

Any sensation was just sensation. If it spiked hard to the left of happy then it could be programmed deep inside to feel like happy. Or maybe he just was that ruined that he no longer cared _what_ it was, just that it **was** , and was **big**.

But this? Filled him with ennui. He couldn’t even see a reason to get up in the morning to the buzz-buzz-buzz that signalled another cookie-cutter day. 

Once the galas and the crowning and the sadistic firsts wore off… was this what old married couples felt like? He isn’t even getting off on the use any more. And when he is castigated for his impotence, he feels… nothing.

And that was that.

Kylo could stand many things, but _nothingness_ was the final straw. 

So he takes one of the times when he’s not scheduled to be there on Hux’s arm like some oversized piece of walking jewellery to get… things. Things that are easier to get than they should be. Things that he has no right to have. 

Things that he quietly taps into his Emperor’s wine goblet, at the time when the Emperor calls for his wine. Like he has, so many times before. Like he won’t, ever again.

Kylo drops gently onto Hux’s knee (it is permissible at this hour), one arm draped around his neck, the other holding the goblet. He strokes a soft thumb along the line of his neck, runs the lip of the vessel to the Emperor’s. 

“You are in a good mood, pet,” Hux says, turning from the wine and refusing to take the first sip just yet.  


“Do you know how long you have been on the throne?” Kylo asks, and toys with the slightly too-long hair at the nape of his neck.  


“Why?”  


He obviously does, and the question is enough to distract him. He takes a sip from the wine, then frowns at the aftertaste.

“Too long,” Kylo says, and slips from his lap. He tosses the goblet to one side, the red spilling happily over the slick tiles.   


Richer red drips from the Emperor’s nose, a trickle that flows through the cracks in his lips. The skin around his mouth alters, taking a death-pall before the liquid hits his heart. “Ren?”

“I’m sorry, you were never meant to rule, only to conquer.” Kylo shimmies his hips and drops the fine skirt, leaving himself bare and clad only in the circles of metal that unclick with the Force. No key was ever needed, only his acquiescence.  


And Hux has lost that.

“I… am…”  


He doesn’t finish, the hand pulling at his own collar to try for more air slipping down. His eyes bulge, his face turned purple and unpleasant, if matching his garb. A pulse, a pulse, and nothing more beats in his chest. The flare and extinguish of a spark in the Force, the sound of air expelled and the start of the end, or the end of… him.

“The same as any other Master,” Kylo sighs. “Not good enough.”  



End file.
